


you're my horizon

by peggycarterisacat



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Crack I guess?, Eleanor Guthrie deserved so much better, F/F, and then riding off into the sunset together, ladies rescuing ladies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 18:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12538012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peggycarterisacat/pseuds/peggycarterisacat
Summary: Abigail rescues Eleanor from prison. It's only polite to return a favor, right?





	you're my horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Palace — Hayley Kiyoko.

When the door to her cell scraped open, Eleanor didn't know what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn't Abigail Ashe, sobbing into a handkerchief and supported by her maid.

"Eleanor," she got out between sobs. _"How has the devil corrupted you?"_

"I— What?"

"You were once a godly woman," she continued. "You rescued me from the hands of the treacherous _pirates_ — monsters that they are! Animals!" She collapsed to her knees, in a heap.

Eleanor blinked, at a complete loss for words. She would never in her life have described herself as a godly woman.

"It's unspeakably tragic that you have turned out this way— I only pray that God will see what goodness still remains, and have mercy on your soul." She burst into a fresh round of tears, hiding her face in the handkerchief, and when she had gotten a handle on her breathing again, turned to the guard. "Might we have a moment of privacy? I find I am overcome."

He nodded, looking bewildered and a little frightened at the presence of an inconsolable woman, and shut the door with a _bang_.

Abigail's maid immediately began to strip off her dress.

"What the fuck is happening?" Eleanor said, looking to and from Abigail and the maid, now in her shift and holding her dress out for Eleanor to take.

"Trade dresses," Abigail said. "We're rescuing you."

"I'm sorry?"

"You rescued me once. Isn't it only polite to return the favor?"

Seeing that Eleanor wasn't moving, Abigail came over to help her unlace her dress. Eleanor started to move mechanically as the dress began to slip from her thin frame — they hadn't exactly starved her here, but nothing they ever gave her was quite enough.

She stepped out of her dress and into the new one, and asked, "How exactly is this going to work?"

"Mary will pretend to be you. We'll set it up as if we've knocked her out, so _she_ won't get in trouble, and—" she plucked the bonnet off Mary's head and settled it on Eleanor's. "We'll walk right on out of here."

"I've never worn a bonnet in my life," Eleanor said. Her brain was struggling to catch up — Abigail had never struck her as the sort of person capable of deception. It was a kind of innocence about her that Eleanor had thought to preserve.

Abigail had called her a formidable woman, but there were so many different ways to be strong. Abigail didn't need to be like her — _shouldn't_ try to emulate her.

"Do you want to get out of here or not?" Abigail asked.

"Yes— yes." Still, Eleanor wasn't one to turn down an opportunity when it presented itself.

Mary was arranging herself artfully on the ground. Abigail pulled a vial out of her bodice and soaked her handkerchief with the liquid inside — a sickly sweet scent filled the cell — and dropped both on the ground next to Mary. Then she came to fix Eleanor's bonnet, which didn't want to tie right.

"Ready?" she asked.

Mary nodded, and collapsed as if in a faint.

"Keep your head down," Abigail whispered, and knocked on the door.

It opened. She sniffled. "Thank you for being so understanding," she said, laying a hand on the guard's arm as she passed. "It's just— We all had such high hopes for her," she said, her voice heaving as if she were about to start sobbing again—

"Yes, miss," the guard said, slamming the door shut without even looking inside. "Let me escort you out."

Eleanor stepped into Abigail's waiting carriage, not quite believing that this was happening.

"How was that?" Abigail asked, once they were on their way. "It wasn't too much, was it?"

"Maybe it was a little bit over the top," Eleanor acknowledged, "but it seems to have worked?"

"Oh— well, we never really had critiques, in school. It's not proper for a lady to _act_ , you know." She sat up straight and prim. "So we would get up in the middle of the night, do dramatic readings, act out a few scenes. It was freeing, getting the chance to imagine myself as a hero — going on adventures, rescuing his lady love. I've had plenty of adventures, but I hadn't—" she pressed her lips together. "Oh, I shouldn't have—"

"Your lady love?" Eleanor asked, with a touch of irony. "I don't think I've ever been described like that before."

"Oh— I don't think you're a, a _damsel_ or anything. It's just— you rescued me, when no man could or would, and it rather upset the way I thought about romance. It's not quite like it is in the stories, is it?" She clasped her hands in front of her, and said more quietly, hesitantly, "I had a lot of time to think about that, and about you, and," she took a deep breath, "I don't think I knew the true meaning of beauty, or of strength, before I met you."

Her hands were shaking, and Eleanor reached out to still them. She looked at Abigail, for the first time really _looked_ at her, and saw something other than a child, the victim of circumstances beyond her control or power to fix. But that was wrong, wasn't it? They were much the same age, after all, and what Abigail had gone through — capture, imprisonment, betrayal, and the death of her only remaining family — wasn't, she reflected, so different from what she herself had gone through. Yet Abigail had not only survived, but seemed to be thriving. Not a victim — a survivor.

And her strength had not blinded her to the value of compassion, as so many did.

"You've been taught that it's wrong to feel this way, haven't you?" she asked softly. "It's not."

"My mind knows that," Abigail said. "But it's still difficult to leave that fear behind."

Eleanor smiled. Something about Abigail made her want to be gentler, in a way she'd never been with Charles, in a way she'd had to force from herself when confronted with Max. To so many people — to Eleanor herself — life could be little more than conflict and struggles for power. But she did not think that was what Abigail wanted.

"Don't be afraid," she said.

They went directly to the docks. Abigail had already booked their passage to the New World, under false names, and her luggage had already been brought aboard.

Eleanor felt more like herself after she had cleaned herself and put on a fresh dress, and she sat down next to Abigail on the narrow cot in their cabin. Through the tiny window, they watched the sun set as the ship departed, and Abigail inched closer until she was wrapped in Eleanor's arms.

"They'll come after us — once they realize what's happened, they won't let us go. We might have to repeat this, sailing somewhere else under different names, until they've lost our trail," she said hesitantly, as if afraid of disappointing Eleanor. "But after that, we'll be free. We can go anywhere and start over. Open a tavern. Something."

"If it's all the same to you," Eleanor wondered, "would you want to go back to Nassau?"

"I'd like that very much," Abigail said. "It seems like a woman can be so much more there. Only I wasn't sure if _you_ would want to."

She looked back at Eleanor then, and her smile had overtaken her face. Eleanor had never seen it before — their time together had always been serious, solemn. Abigail had always been beautiful, but this changed her — now she was radiant. She was hope, the sun rising over the horizon after the dark of night, banishing fear of what was uncertain, unknown. She was the joy of homecoming and the excitement of a new beginning, all rolled into one.

Eleanor pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth; Abigail froze, turned, looked at her. Traces of that fear lingered in her eyes, and Eleanor brought her hand up to stroke down her cheek. Not without trepidation, she came forward again. She kissed gently, hesitantly, as if she feared everything that had passed between them hung by a single, fragile thread.

"Don’t be afraid," Eleanor said again, and this time she relaxed, allowed it to deepen.

"They won't be expecting us," Eleanor said, as they lay in each other's arms in the dark.

"They won't," Abigail agreed. "But doesn't that make it all the more exciting?"

**Author's Note:**

> Flint and Silver were pretty much unstoppable when their goals were aligned — I absolutely believe Eleanor would have been the same way if she had someone she was willing to be an actual partner with, who would play good cop to her bad cop.
> 
> Also, like, chloroform totally hadn't been invented in the 1700s. Shhhh. That's not important lol.


End file.
